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LinuxPlanet: The Perils of Irresponsible Advocacy

"Stan expressed an interest in Linux not too long ago, noting
that a nephew of his was 'really into it.' The nephew,
irresponsibly, had offered to come over to his house and install
Slackware for him. When Stan asked about his existing applications,
the nephew promised him that WINE would handle it all for him just
fine. He was also told that he could scrap his online banking
software under Windows with impunity, he didn't have to worry about
securing his connection because his nephew would maintain root
privileges and had the necessary 'skillz' (I met the kid once, he
pronounced it that way) to protect his machine, and that 'lots of
programs like Outlook Express are already on Linux.'"

"It was disconcerting to go down the list of promises about the
new install, because even though I'd never really 'advocated' Linux
to Stan as anything other than what I knew and liked, I knew he was
thinking, 'Why's he suddenly admitting to all these
difficulties?'"

"When we got around to discussing the nephew's proposed solution
for a desktop environment (which I won't name), I finally broke
down."

"'The fact is, it's not 'just like Windows,' I said, 'It has
rough edges, it does weird things sometimes. It's at its
unpredictable, low-performing worst when you try to make it act
like a Windows machine. Everything you've read about the elegance
of Linux goes out the window when you bolt some of these GUI's on
top of the machine. It be able to run all your Windows stuff with a
magical program, and I'm not 100 percent sure, until we look at
your modem, that you're going to so much as look at a web page with
the thing without spending a few extra dollars.'"